Ted Cruz’s daughters will not be allowed to attend classes, not even online for the next 7-10 days as the fall out from the family’s Cancun vacation continues.
The elite K-12 Houston private school, name St. John’s sent an email to parents warning about international travel amid the coronavirus pandemic, three weeks before the Cruz family fled Texas to avoid the winter weather.
According to Politico, the email says students who travel internationally must quarantine for 7 to 10 days upon their return. And they won’t be able to even learn online while in isolation.
Now, some of St. John’s parents are demanding that the school enforce the same quarantine rules, which will keep Cruz’s children, aged 10 and 12, out of class for several days.
“At the end of the day, he’s taking this heat for using his children as an excuse for taking a vacation. And that’s a mistake,” said Lara Hollingsworth, a parent of three kids attending the school, according to Politico. “From a parent standpoint, all I’m asking is the school follows the CDC guidelines, and I need to say I have no reason to believe they won’t.”
“You’ve got someone out here saying, ‘I did this to be a good dad.’ No one is trying to dispute that,” she added. “The question is are you fully aware of the consequences of what you did? Does it make you a bad parent? No. Does it make you a bad senator? Maybe.”
“You start with the fact that there are people ticked off by those who think they’re the VIPs at this school who don’t want to be bothered to follow the rules because it infringes on their social life. Then you’ve got people on top of that who don’t like Ted Cruz,” another parent Victoria Konar said. “And then you have everyone irritated because they’re freezing to death and can’t bathe and can’t eat and he’s going off to the Ritz Carlton in Cancun and lying about it.”
A third parent at the school who did not want to be named told Politico: “It’s enraging to see this politician go out of the country like this, and there’s a concern that he would be putting the school at risk if he was trying to sneak out. There are just a huge number of people who are very angry at Ted Cruz, like most people in the United States.”
A Cruz spokesman said his “daughters plan to follow the St. John’s policy.”
Cruz was spotted boarding a flight to Cancun, Mexico on Wednesday as millions of his constituents struggled to survive the frigid temperatures brought on by the deadly winter weather.
Amid swift backlash, Cruz released a statement claiming that he was just trying to do be good dad to his girls who wanted to take a trip with friends since school was canceled for the week. He also claimed that he was suppose to return to Houston the day after he landed in Cancun. However, text messages leaked from a group chat with his wide Heidi and her friends shows that Cruz was planning on staying in sunny Cancun until Sunday and the reason for leaving Texas had nothing to do with his children.
